WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” Goes Live

After three release candidates and a one-week delay to ensure as many pending issues as possible were addressed, WordPress.org announced late Tuesday that WordPress 3.5 “Elvin” is now available. The newest version is named as a tribute to the late jazz drummer Elvin Jones.

WordPress Co-Founder Matt Mullenweg posted Tuesday that “the most dramatic new change you’ll notice is a completely re-imagined flow for uploading photos and creating galleries. Media has long been a friction point and we’ve listened hard and given a lot of thought into crafting this new system.

3.5 includes a new default theme, Twenty Twelve, which has a very clean mobile-first responsive design and works fantastic as a base for a CMS site. Finally we’ve spent a lot of time refreshing the styles of the dashboard, updating everything to be Retina-ready with beautiful high resolution graphics, a new color picker, and streamlining a couple of fewer-used sections of the admin.”

Media Upload & Gallery Organization

WordPress 3.5 implements a revamped system for uploading your favorite media and creating galleries. While in the process of writing a post on the back-end, all you have to do is click the “Add Media” button. The streamlined process is a significant time saver compared to earlier versions.

The drag-and-drop media system lets you enter a large amount of media files into a particular entry without the need to upload them one at a time. Once they are stored, convenient “check boxes” are provided so you can easily designate which files will be included in a specific gallery or post.

There is also a method for re-arranging the images within a gallery which is similar to the gallery organization tools on Facebook; allowing you to move images to and fro with a single click and drag of your mouse.

Meta data such as titles, captions and alternate text can be added “on the fly” without having to wait for a page reload every time a new image is brought up.

Twenty Twelve

The new WordPress 3.5 comes with its own default theme: Twenty Twelve. The template offers a minimalistic approach to blogging that is highly organized while ensuring all the most important features are at your disposal. For example, the new Twenty Twelve theme comes with a fully responsive design.

The adaptive layout means that mobile device and tablet computer users will receive a personalized view of your site’s content that fits into the screen size by automatically adjusting the parameters. This means less “thumb-scrolling” and “pinching” in the long run, since smartphone users will be able to view more information without having to zoom in and out constantly.

Streamlined User Interface

The WordPress 3.5 UI has received an overhaul that enables full hiDPI/Retina support to coincide with the resolution of your device. The dashboard icons look fantastic when compared to older versions (see screenshot below). The amount of detail offered by the higher resolution is a vast improvement to say the least.

The new task-focused Welcome Screen gives new users a simple outline for getting started, which in turn will get most beginning bloggers up and running in just a few short minutes.

WordPress 3.5 includes a number of tools for developers, “making it easier than ever to use WordPress as an application platform.”

Update To WordPress 3.5

In order to update to WordPress 3.5, all you have to do is go to the top of your screen (at the level of your Screen Options tab) and click on the Please Update Now link that follows the WordPress 3.5 is available! prompt.